About Me

Buford C. Terrell
Controlled substances laws and their consequences have been the center of my professional life for over fifteen years. I host a public interest television program in Houston, “Drugs, Crime, and Politics” , produced by the Drug Policy forum of Texas, and have done so for most of its ten-year history. Before my retirement, I taught a seminar, “Controlled Substances Law” for many years at South Texas College of Law.
In this blog I intend to explore the features and consequences of those laws, especially the unintended consequences, and look at the need for, and possibility of, changing them. Don’t expect a lot of breaking news or current events, although there will be some. My approach will be more historical and theoretical. I hope to get a lot of criticism – good, bad, and otherwise – and to start some good, heated discussions.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Children of Promise

Children
of Promise

I
have been hosting “Drugs. Crime & Politics”, a public affairs television
program of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, for about ten years now, but the
interview that most sticks in my mind dates to the earliest years of that show.The interviewee (whose name, I am ashamed to
admit, I have forgotten) was a retired juvenile probation officer.During her work with teens in trouble and
with troubled teens she discovered that many of them – a surprising number –
had one or both parents in prison.

When
she retired, she visited the principals of several Houston high schools and
convinced them to allow her to come on campus and set up self-help groups of
teens with parents in prison.The only
assets required for this project were her time, knowledge, and concern for the
kids.The kids did the work
themselves.Meeting at school after the
school day, they set the agenda, much of which was just talking and sharing
with each other.

I
lost touch with this effort, so I can’t give a long-term report on its success;
but two news items this week brought it to mind.One was tragic and the other optimistic.

The
tragic event happened in Bellaire, Texas, a small suburb of Houston.A police officer stopped a car, and when he
approached that car the driver shot him.The owner of a near-by business ran out to help and the driver killed
him as well.For the first time, this
small town lost a officer killed in the line of duty.The alleged killer was quickly arrested, ad
soon details of his life history emerged.This twenty-two year old had a non-violent criminal record, but the
crucial fact in his life happened early.He was three years old when his father was convicted of drug dealing and
sentenced to forty years in Texas prison.

The
optimistic event was a television interview with a young woman in New York
City.For several years she has helped
operate Children of Promise, a charitable organization she had helped
found.Children of Promise offered
material support, counseling, and just good friendship to children of all ages
in Brooklyn who had a least one parent in prison.The name “Children of Promise” illustrates
the optimism this group brings to those they aid.

It’s
a pity her group didn’t find the Bellaire shooter nineteen years ago.

This
large group of abused children – abused by all of us through our unthinking
penal policies – contains a large number of victims of the War on (People Who
Use) Drugs. These children are being
punished, not for anything they have done, but because their parents ran afoul
of unthinking social mores manifested in unenforceable laws.They are punished not only by present
deprivation, but by having their futures stolen from them.I will not call them “collateral damage”
because that term is too cold and clinical for what we are doing to these
kids.A better name for them is “Children
of Perdition”because they are damned to
a life of harm and despair – and too often of harm to those around them.

The
best thing we can do for this group of children is to keep it from growing by
repealing the destructive War on Drugs which has already created too many
casualties.But in the interim, we can
do like the retired probation officer or the woman in New York.We can reach out personally and in groups to
mitigate the harm already done to those children among us.

Help
change the Children of Perdition into the Children of Promise.

[If anyone wants to watch selected
programs from “Drugs, Crime & Politics”, they are archived at Youtube.com/stv or can be accessed by links from www.dpft.org.]

2 comments:

Marilyn Gambrell is a parole officer turned teacher who started the program No More Victims at the M.B. Smiley High School in Houston, Texas. The program was developed to assist children with incarcerated parents, hoping to prevent them from following in their parent's footsteps. Since the program's start in 1993, hundreds of children have graduated and turned their lives around under her tenure.

Gambrell is also the author of a series of books entitled Cherish the Child Within, a curriculum used by educators, professionals, and social workers, and has recently completed a series of coloring books entitled My Feelings Are Real. She was played by Jami Gertz in the Lifetime movie Fighting the Odds: The Marilyn Gambrell Story(Wikipedia -- thanks, Trish)

I and also my pals came analyzing the great key points on the website while the sudden came up with an awful feeling I never thanked the website owner for those tips. All the people were definitely stimulated to read them and have in truth been having fun with those things. Thank you for genuinely well kind and for opting for this form of wonderful subject matter most people are really needing to discover. My very own honest regret for not expressing appreciation to you sooner. http://marijuanaaccessories.com/ http://mustbehigh.com/ http://legalize.co/